By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Jun 10 2005 (IPS)

The designation of Eduardo Rodríguez, the head of the Supreme Court, as caretaker president of Bolivia has not calmed the protests or led to a lifting of the roadblocks of rocks and smoking tires and wood that have cut off the city of La Paz for weeks.

The social upheaval, which broke out nearly three weeks ago, forced Carlos Mesa to hand in his resignation on Monday, although it was not accepted by Congress until Thursday.

But the demonstrators have failed to achieve their main goal: the nationalisation of this impoverished South American country’s abundant natural gas reserves.

“Have we been fighting to get rid of Mesa, like we did with those responsible for the October 2003 killings, just to replace him with a lawyer who reached the presidency of the Supreme Court with the backing of the former governing right-wing Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR)?” complained a local resident in the slum city of El Alto, next to La Paz.

He was referring to Mesa’s predecessor, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada of the MNR, who stepped down and fled the country in October 2003 after around 70 protesters were killed in a police and army crackdown.

The new interim president, named to the post late Thursday in an emergency session of Congress held in Sucre, the historic capital, rather than La Paz, will attempt to negotiate a truce with the leaders of the groups that have cut off the roads into El Alto and La Paz, causing shortages of gasoline and basic foodstuffs.

The leaders of the Central Obrera Regional (COB) trade union confederation and the federation of neighbourhood committees in El Alto called an emergency meeting to discuss the new political scenario.

However, they said the traffic blockades and protest marches would continue until Rodríguez agrees to nationalise the country’s gas and oil industry.

The executive secretary of COB, Jaime Solares, one of the leaders of the demonstrations, even instructed his followers to step up the roadblocks and demonstrations.

“We will continue until we achieve the nationalisation of the country’s hydrocarbons through a military occupation of the oil and gas fields,” said Solares after Rodríguez was designated interim president.

COB and the other trade unions and indigenous organisations involved in the protests successfully pressed for the president of Congress Hormando Vaca Díez to give up his bid to replace Mesa.

Since Bolivia currently has no vice-president, Vaca Díez was next in line to succeed Mesa, followed by the head of the lower house of Congress, Deputy Mario Cossío, and the president of the Supreme Court, Rodríguez.

Vaca Díez, who initially insisted on his right to become caretaker president, had the backing of the former governing “mega-coalition” made up of the MNR and his own party, the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR).

But in El Alto, the wounds are still open from the brutal crackdown ordered by the MNR’s Sánchez de Lozada in October 2003 before he resigned and was replaced by Mesa, his vice-president.

The month of protests held in El Alto and other cities at that time were against a plan for foreign oil companies to export natural gas to Mexico and the United States, and in favour of higher taxes for the oil firms.

Mesa, who was made president by Congress with the support of the demonstrators, had resigned as vice-president a few days earlier to protest the use of force against the indigenous and labour groups and leftist parties that had taken to the streets.

The protesters who are now demanding the nationalisation of the oil industry are also calling for a constituent assembly to be convened, to rewrite the constitution in order to grant a greater decision-making role to the country’s poor indigenous majority.

But their demands clash with those of a business and landowning movement in wealthy eastern provinces who want regional autonomy in order to gain greater local control over the profits from the natural gas, which is concentrated in that part of the country.

Vaca Díez, a senator from the rich eastern province of Santa Cruz, convened the special congressional session that accepted Mesa’s resignation and named Rodríguez president on Thursday in Sucre, instead of La Paz, 700 km away.

But he failed to reckon with the capacity of mobilisation of the trade unions, campesinos, miners and teachers who stormed the streets of the colonial city of Sucre to oppose his aim of becoming caretaker president.

Some 10,000 demonstrators faced down the police and their tear gas in the 25 de Mayo plaza, blocking the start of the congressional session until late Thursday, and forcing Vaca Díez himself to take refuge in a military garrison.

The tension reached a peak when it was announced that a 52-year-old miner, Carlos Coro Mayta, was killed at a police checkpoint seven km from Sucre.

The news of the miner’s death swept around Bolivia and the more than 100 roadblocks, with the protesters blaming the killing on Senator Vaca Díez.

Forced by the protests, and by a threat from a number of mayors to declare a hunger strike, Vaca Díez and Cossío, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, announced that they would not accept the post of president.

Both blamed Mesa as well as the head of the main opposition party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), indigenous leader Evo Morales, for the marches and protests, which they said were aimed at weakening the political system and the traditional parties.

Rodríguez thus automatically was named president, and was called to Sucre, where Congress was meeting.

The formula for overcoming the worst political and social crisis to shake Bolivia since October 2003 was suggested by MAS.

The leftist party, which emerged among Bolivia’s coca farmers and took the second-largest number of votes in the 2002 elections, proposed that the heads of the two houses of Congress step aside in order for Rodríguez to become interim president until early elections are held.

Mesa was to govern until 2007, when the term of his predecessor, Sánchez de Lozada, would have come to an end.

But MAS’s political victory will not immediately translate into the demobilisation of its supporters, who are still in La Paz. Morales will consult with the party’s grassroots supporters about the possibility of returning to their rural areas.

When asked by journalists about the nationalisation of the country’s natural gas, Rodríguez was vague, and suggested opening up a debate on the situation in the energy industry and the feasibility of the demand and the complexities surrounding it.

Mesa did not dare take the step of nationalising the gas industry out of fear that confiscation of the gas and oil fields granted in concession to foreign companies like Brazil’s Petrobras and British Petroleum in the 1990s would lead to international economic isolation for Bolivia.

The foreign companies say they have invested 3.5 billion dollars since 1996, and the previous administration estimated the amount of indemnification that would have to be paid in the event of confiscation at 8.0 billion dollars.

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